


The Quiet After

by WhatOtherPlanet



Category: NieR: Automata (Video Game)
Genre: 2B Is Sad, 9S Is Fucked Up, A2 Is Grumpy, Angst, I was supposed to sleep but I wrote this instead, Multi, Oh god that's a tag already, Post-Ending E (NieR: Automata), Sharing a Brain, there's gotta be a better tag for that, warning for MCD because not everybody survived canon bullshit
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-01-10
Updated: 2018-07-09
Packaged: 2019-03-03 02:11:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 3
Words: 4,683
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13331292
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WhatOtherPlanet/pseuds/WhatOtherPlanet
Summary: The world starts up again. Only... certain things have been misplaced.





	1. Initialize

**Author's Note:**

> I have been sitting on a bunch of Durarara!! fics for like, three months, and I finished the first part of this in 2 hours. God is dead.

In the wake of it all, the earth was still. Flowers grew, bloomed, let their seeds fly far away into the distance, and then withered softly away as the snow blanketed the earth. A long time passed, as this cycle carried on.

More complicated life, as well. The animals were hardly bothered by it. They didn't know the name of YoRHa, or the reason for the war. They didn't really even know the difference between androids and machines. It didn't matter to them. Their lives carried on regardless.

But around them, scattered about but still real, still present, there were survivors.

 

 

 

Anemone greeted the horizon with a sigh, eyeing the report she'd received from her scouts this morning. The wind rose up to whip at her, but she just tugged her scarf tighter. Below, the other resistance survivors were combing the dunes, looking for anything buried by the ever-shifting sand.

The scouts had spotted another android, far off in the desert. And not just an android. A YoRHa model.

Anemone grimaced. There was too much desert to search, and every hour out here cost more maintenance than a day in the city.

Still. Her fist tightened around a necklace. Dog tags.

Rose. Gerbera. Margaret. Lilly. Erica. Sonia. Dahlia. Shion. Four. Sixteen. Twenty-one.

It'd been a very long time, but she hadn't forgotten in the slightest. Not them, and none of the ones before.

She hadn't forgotten Number Two, either.

Still, there were plenty of YoRHa androids beside A2. Even if the report had been accurate, the odds of finding her out here were...

Not good. Not in the least.

And it was feeling less and less likely each hour they searched.

"Anemone?"

The captain looked up sharply, to see one of her soldiers running up the dune. "Yes? What is it, Amelia?"

Amelia saluted sharply, her chest heaving as she recovered from the sprint.

"We... found them," she said.

Anemone let out a long sigh of relief. "Oh good," she said, then, "Wait. _Them?_ "

 

 

 

There was void.

A2 had known death more than once. Caused it, certainly. Felt it, too, in a metaphorical sense. The death of purpose, the death of meaning, the death of—

_Believe me, I appreciate the sentiment. But now isn't the best time for navel-gazing._

_..._

_You need to wake up, A2. You aren't dead just yet._

Then, there was infinity.

 

 

 

A2 gasped, choking on water as a wave rolled over her. She blinked, forcing herself upright. The sea stretched out before her, the silver expanse marred only by the wrecks of old buildings rising up at decreasing intervals from the waves. She looked back, finding the familiar city behind her.

She... should not be alive.

She put a hand to her face, feeling her fingers and her eyes. She stood, brushing the salt and sand off her legs, off her body. She felt... tired. Sluggish. Like she hadn't slept well.

Of course she hadn't, sleeping on the beach. Why had she done that? How could she have been so careless...?

It came back to her slowly, accompanied by a creeping sense of dread. 9S. The machines. The tower.

Had she killed 9S? She couldn't remember. She remembered the fight, remembered how lost he looked, how... rabid. Infected and twisted and... tragic. But she couldn't remember the end of it, precisely.

She glanced around, her teeth set. Her hand searched for the sword that should have been on her back, but she found nothing. No sign of it up or down the beach.

She was unarmed. For the first time in a long time, she felt naked.

But there were no machines, either. No androids. No annoying pods. Not even the cries of seagulls. Nothing here but the waves, and the wind.

A2 stared out at it all for a long, long time.

Eventually, she spoke. More to hear a voice, than anything. "Is this death? Or, some kind of simulation, cooked up by the machines? Torture by isolation... well, I'm used to it at least." She frowned, clasping and unclasping her fingers, feeling the sensation of it, of mechanisms shifting beneath worn time-worn skin. "I can't... have actually lived through that, right?"

"You're right. You didn't."

The voice grabbed A2's neck like fingers made of ice. She gritted her teeth, shut her eyes, tried to pretend she hadn't heard it. "So I am dead," she said.

"Well, yes and no."

She opened her eyes again, and turned to look.

"If you're here?" she said. "That's a  _yes_."

2B smiled a thin smile. "Unfortunately for us both, it's a bit more complicated than that."

 

 

 

"Stay back!"

Panic sizzled at the edges of his sight. The sand was hot all around him, the light scorching his skin, but that was irrelevant. Utterly, utterly irrelevant. The only thing that mattered was right here, in his arms, and they were not going to take her from him again.

"Stay away from her! Stay the fuck back!"

One of the androids—were they androids? Or more machines like Adam and Eve. He couldn't tell. It didn't matter—raised his hands. "Easy, we're not coming any closer. We're just checking on any survivors to make sure they're not carrying a logic virus."

Who gave a shit if he was infected? Or if she was infected? All that mattered was that they were... together?

What?

Wait?

How did...?

 

 

"9S?"

9S looked up. Anemone, the resistance leader. He recognized her, recognized the concern in her eyes and on her voice. "Y-yeah," he said.

"Are you alright?" she asked. She took a step forward, gingerly, obviously. Not trying to sneak anything past him.

He nodded. His head was swimming things were... jumbled. He remembered A2, and him, fighting, but... something had been off. There were machines, they were in some kind of structure, and...

2B.

"What about her?" Anemone asked.

9S blinked, and finally looked down at what he was holding in his arms. He felt something in his chest break it's shackles and soar. His shoulders, tensed so long they felt like solid steel, finally slumped down into something like rest, and as the resistance members approached him and got him to stand up, leading him back towards the closest thing to home left in the world, he cradled her in his arms and cried without the slightest shred of shame.

She was okay. 2B was okay.

 

 

The obvious question only hit him later, once they were more than halfway back to the camp.

_Why isn’t she waking up?_

 

 

 

"You're fucking with me," A2 said.

"Well, yes," 2B said. "Just my being here is probably doing a lot worse than that at this point."

"No.  _No._  I know I... I picked up some of your memories, but—"

"Focus, A2," 2B said. She walked forward, or, she _appeared_ to, anyway. "I am not here. You are alone on the beach. I'm hacking into your visual processor, and the only reason I can _do that at all_ is because I only exist inside your head."

"Prove it," A2 said.

"Punch me," 2B said.

Before she'd even had a chance to close her mouth, A2's fist sailed through it, emerging from the back of her head like she was no more than a hologram.

"You really don't like me," 2B said, raising an eyebrow as A2 withdrew her fist.

"You've caused me a lot of trouble," A2 said, grimacing as she flexed her knuckles.

A pause followed.

"Well, fuck."

"Agreed."

"What the hell do we do now?"

2B frowned. "Good question. My memories are a bit hazy, but I take it YoRHa... isn't much of a concern anymore."

There was a pang in those words, A2 noted. She couldn't relate. She nodded.

"In which case," 2B continued. "It would probably be best to check in with the resistance."

A2 let out a low growl. "Why? I'm not their goddamned keeper."

"You don't even want to check? To make sure they're alright? To make sure _Anemone's_ alright?"

A2 froze, her eyes tracking slowly to 2B and filling with all the overflowing rage in her heart. "If you've touched my fucking memories I will _rip you out of my skull and—_ ”

“She told us,” 2B interjected. She glanced away. “From the way she talked, I got the sense you two were close. I apologize for assuming.”

A2 really, really wanted to go find some machines to stab right now, but instead she was on this empty fucking beach, stuck with this... uncomfortably familiar-looking android who was apparently living inside her skull. And since she wasn’t particuarly well-versed in the art of removing passengers from her brain, she didn’t have a whole lot of options with respect to solving that problem at the moment. And, anyway...

She... really hoped Anemone was okay.

A2 sighed. “Yeah, yeah. That’s... yeah." She clapped her hands, resolving to process all sometime firmly in the future when she wasn't possibly recovering from death. "Not the worst plan. And anyway, unless  _I_ read things wrong, you're hoping we run across a certain scanner model too, aren't you?

2B still didn't meet A2's eyes, but after a moment, she gave a quiet nod.

A2 sighed again, and cracked her knuckles. "Alright. Sure. Fine. Fuck it. Good enough for now.”

“The path is back through those buildings, through one of the—”

A2 smiled mirthlessly. “Hey, 2B? If you keep backseat driving I swear on humanity's fucking corpse I will find some way to rip your goddamn tongue out."

"Ah. Lead on then."

She started off, leaving 2B standing on the beach. No footsteps followed.

“Aren't you gonna follow me?” she called back, only to look forward again and find 2B standing next to the path in front of her. “Oh. Right.”

“You’ll get used to it,” 2B said, offering a shrug and a wan smile.

A2 brushed past her, off towards the city where it’d all gone wrong. “Let’s hope I don’t have to.”

 


	2. Transit

Existing was strange.

2B... _lingered_. That was the only way she could think to put it. She floated in the static sea of A2's memory core, her processes distorted by unfamiliar neural architecture. It was like being sifted through hard gravel.

She'd started to sense things, eventually. Echoes in the dark, what she'd later understand were A2's sensory inputs, misinterpreted by her barely-formed conscious processes as white noise. She'd thought it was the afterlife.

She wasn't sure she'd been lucky to be wrong.

Eventually, mostly by accident, she'd tapped herself into A2's sensory matrix, and the sudden flood of information had brought a euphoric clarity. It had stunned her at first, just how much alike they were, physically, until she'd remembered that they were the same model. In a sense, on a purely material level, they were the same person.

That was only for a moment, however. She'd quickly noticed the differences--the replacement parts, the wear, the sheer age of all of it. A2 had to be thousands of years old by now, and if there were any pieces left from all the way back then, it was impossible to pick them out.

There was memory too, to distinguish them, and 2B remembered everything. Even the Logic Virus erasing her, carving away her soul, or whatever passed for one. Even the very moment of her death. A2, staring down at her with a vague weariness as she ran her through with her own sword. Nines, looking on with uncomprehending grief.

The pang that made her feel, even now... The thought of him, alone, marching towards a grim conclusion she'd seen time and time again, this time without her to...

...

Well, she couldn't say it had been better _before_.

She didn't remember anything after that moment, but she could guess it hadn't ended well. A2 wasn't patient, and 9S... wasn't good at letting go. Still, she didn't know what had happened, not really, and she'd yet to ask A2.

Still, she felt... strangely at peace. She watched through A2's eyes as her host traveled the familiar path, free to feel without doing. The gentle flow of the air on her skin, distorted as it hit malfunctioning sensor clusters, was... something else entirely. The feeling of A2's breath in her lungs, of her heartbeat pounding in her chest, all out of 2B's control but so intimately racing within her...

"It really is beautiful," she said, idly, letting the words filter through A2's auditory channels.

She felt herself flicker with embarrasment for letting that slip out. For a moment, she thought A2 hadn't heard her, that she'd gotten lucky and misjudged the connections.

"Yeah," A2 muttered. "It is."

2B flickered a bit more, and shifted her attention to the visual input.

They stood at the mouth of the sewer pipe, looking out over the great crater in the center of the city. Soft daylight shimmered off the waterfalls. Birds wheeled in the sky above.

And below, in the valley, life had already started to reclaim its hold. Spriggs of green were sprouting up between the slowly rusting bodies of machines, weeds and flowers intermingling with the ruin of war. It wouldn't be long now, before this whole place was unrecognizable, nothing at all like the grim grey pit 2B vividly remembered.

It was beautiful. It really was.

"Well," A2 said. "Better keep moving."

And... hopped off the ledge.

At first, 2B thought she must have misunderstood something. A2 must have had some kind of parachute, or, perhaps knew a very precise handhold or a place to land that would be relatively safe. But then, as the next second crawled by and A2's hand reached up, grasping at the wind with a sudden, panicked desperation, 2B realized what had just happened.

"You forgot you didn't have a pod," she said, as A2 crashed into the wreckage.

"OW! SHUT UP!"

2B cut herself off from all the pain A2 was feeling. It was superficial damage... mostly. "Wait. You didn't even have a pod. Unless... did 042 attach itself to you?"

A2 roared something incoherent as she forced herself back to her knees. Multiple microfractures... that was going to take time for the autorepair systems to patch up. "Fuck you, and fuck your shitty pod too!"

"That wasn't in its programming," 2B mused. "And yet, you're so used to having it around..." She would have smirked, if she still had a face. "That's... charming."

A2 just groaned.

 

  
Jackass looked down on the sleeping androids with a skeptical eye. "Of all the YoRHa models to survive," they muttered. They handed two cables to the camp doctor. "Here, Hinata. Two shielded access cables."

Hinata nodded, taking the cables gingerly, making sure not to touch the ends. It wasn't necessary to be so careful just yet, but it was better to be in the habit of these things. He pulled a device out of his bag, a large, bulky tablet with a set of analog button controls, and no display save for a small set of diodes on one corner. He attached one of the cables to the tablet, then, carefully, reached in with gloved hands and lifted 9S's head off the cot.

Jackass tensed as he brushed the hair away from the access ports in 9S's skull, and connected the wire. Their hands fell to the sheathed sword and pistol on their belt.

Hinata stared at the device for a long few moments, watching the diodes blink as he adjusted the scan. "No obvious infection," he said. "I'll check the device just to be sure, but it looks like this one's clean."

Jackass shifted uneasily as the doctor unplugged 9S and tossed the wire in a plastic bin marked "INFOHAZARD." "Could a virus fool that scanner?" they asked.

"Not as far as I've heard of. It's rudimentary, but it's thorough. He'll wake up with a headache for the trouble, but if it says he's clean..." Hinata shrugged. "This is as sure was we can be. Against all odds, another YoRHa survivor."

 _Another_.

The Fall of YoRHa had been... _traumatic_ , for the androids of Earth. It'd taken years to wipe out the last infected squadrons, and occasional outbreaks of the last logic virus still cropped up now and again as solo androids who'd gone missing wandered back into infection range of some settlement. Every android unaccounted for—thousands of them still—was another tragedy waiting to happen.

There weren't many YoRHa left. With the two new arrivals, that made seven in the whole world.

Hinata fiddled with the device, ejecting the shielded information core and slotting in a new one before connecting the second cable and moving to 2B's side. He lifted her hair, and attached the cable as well.

When the device beeped, Jackass's sword was at the sleeping woman's throat in an instant.

"Wait," Hinata said, unnervingly calm as he examined the lights. He did something, and the device beeped again, a long, low tone. "That's... not a virus."

"Yeah?" Jackass said. "Go on."

Hinata looked up at them with a perplexed expression. "There's nothing in this brain at all. This is an empty body."

Hesitantly, Jackass withdrew their sword. "2B's...?"

Hinata shrugged, as he disconnected the wires. "Not in residence."

 

  
"That's... problematic," was Anemone's response to the news.

She stood against one of the crumbling walls at the edge of the camp, looking out towards the city center. She looked, to Jackass, like one of those really old statues you saw in bigger cities sometimes. Stiff and strangely tired, despite the immortality of bronze. "9S won't like this," she said.

"My thinking exactly," Jackass agreed. Hinata was going over the checks again, gradually scaling down the security while letting more and more data slip from the androids' heads. "He's never been all that stable, and the shock of this, getting what he... very obviously wanted and then immediately being denied it... that's not gonna go over well. We'll need to take measures."

"He's a scanner model," Anemone said, darkly. "Tell me, Jackass. Have you ever fought one of them?"

"No."

"I have. Once. I was lucky enough to be behind her when the infection took hold. She killed everyone she could see in seconds. I only survived by running her through before she could turn around."

Jackass grimaced.

Anemone turned to Jackass. She put a hand on their shoulder, her fingers strong as steel under her gloves. "For now, I want you to head out to the Forest Camp. Inform them of the situation, and get them to send 4S back with you. If 9S does grow violent, he might just be the only one who can bring him down."

Jackass saluted, only a touch more seriously than usual. "Aye aye cap'n."

"Then go," Anemone said with the faintest smile.

And Jackass went, jogging off towards the city, breaking into a run as they hit the grassy valley. Anemone, though, stayed where she was, watching her subordinate run off into the distance.

She smiled a little less faintly, and though Jackass wasn't there to notice it, she looked a little less old.

A lot of androids had died in the last few years. A lot of androids Anemone had cared about. She'd gotten used to that a long time ago. She'd told herself she had, at least.

"Glad you made it, Jackass," Anemone said.

Then, she turned and walked back to the camp.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> One of the GDQ speedrunners used they/them pronouns for Jackass for some reason and it stuck with me as feeling strangely appropriate.


	3. Contact

They ran into each other outside the resistance camp.

Jackass didn't pay much attention to the person coming down the road at first. 9S was bound to wake up soon, and the forest camp was a long walk off. As they got closer though, things caught their attention. The battered, worn-down skin, the old remains of a uniform only half holding together, the long silver hair, so much better kept than the rest. And in the way she walked, and stared straight ahead, an aura like angry death.

They'd met before. Only once or twice, but enough for Jackass to have a pretty firm idea who she was.

"Oh," they said, stopping dead in front of A2. "Hey A2."

A2 raised a hand in a casual wave, showing no signs of stopping. "Sup Jackass."

Jackass wondered if "did you survive the fall of YoRHa because you disconnected from their networks or just because you're a hardcore bitch" was an impolite question. They decided to go with caution on this one. "You headed to the camp?"

A2 continued down the road without even looking back. "Yup."

Jackass nodded. "Cool. Just so you know though, there's a bit of a situation there. Some... problematic YoRHa survivors. Make sure you talk to Anemone as soon as you get in."

A2 just shrugged and carried on.

"Well, I tried," Jackass muttered, turning back to their own path. They'd have to hurry. A2 tended to be trouble, and the last thing they needed was A2 and 9S _both_ going off at once.

A horrible thought flashed through Jackass's brain. "God," they said aloud to nobody at all. "They don't... _know each other_ , do they?" They shook their head sharply. "No way, no way. They've probably _met,_ but... nah, when would they ever have had time to... _nah._ "

With a good shake to clear their head, Jackass banished that horrible thought, and continued on their way.

 

 

Back down the path, however, a quiet discussion had broken out.

"I don't give a shit," A2 said. "Whoever it is, they're not relevant right now. All I want is to get you _out of my head._ You can meet and greet with old war buddies _after_ we accomplish that."

"If YoRHa technical personnel survived, they'd be our best bet at achieving what you want," 2B countered. She walked beside A2 like the ghost she was, her footsteps eerily silent on the old dirt path. "You have to consider that possibility."

A2 gritted her teeth. "I don't need _YoRHa's_ help."

" _YoRHa_ is dead. _You_ are not the only invested party. _We_ need whatever help we can get."

"Shut up. Stop _talking."_

A slow silence fell, replaced by A2's solitary footsteps. The resistance camp wasn't far.

Even if 2B was right... they'd resolve it when they got there.

 

 

Anemone sighed. Things were quiet. Slow. Too slow. This boded ill. Like the tide going out before a tsunami.

Then, a runner came from the sentries at the edge of camp. "Captain!"

Anemone rubbed the bridge of her nose. "What is it, Johanne?"

"A problem! We have an uncleared YoRHa survivor entering camp! We tried to stop her, but she--"

The rest didn't parse. It didn't need to, because suddenly the "YoRHa survivor" stepped into view.

Anemone stared in unbelieving, uncomprehending, slow-dawning horror.

"Of all the..." she felt her voice crack and fail, and she sagged in her chair. "Number 2. Of course."

Her eyes tracked across the camp. It was almost comic. It would have been _hilarious_ if it had been happening to someone else's universe.

A part of her thought _there's no way. My luck's not_ that _bad._

But today just wasn't her day, because sure enough, over in the sickbay...

9S was sitting up in his cot.

 

 

9S stared at his hands as the doctor told him he was fine. He didn't believe it.

 _How,_ was the question that ran through his head on loop. _How am I alive? How am I here?_

A pause, as his eyes tracked down, finding the sleeping figure lying in the cot beside him. Still as death. _How is she here?_

He reached out, gently brushing a strand of hair away from closed eyes. But, no response. Same was when his consciousness had come into focus lying in the desert, half-buried in the sand with her.

He felt something sharp take a stab at his lungs, and the question altered itself.

_Why? Why am I the only one who's woken up?_

He touched his hand to her cheek this time, more gently than ever. She was cold. Empty. He knew this. He'd known this when he carried her into camp, but a wave of bile rose in him anyway, and suddenly he was staggering out of the sick bay, ignoring the protests of the doctor, ignoring everything save his racing, worldess thoughts.

And then he saw her.

 

 

A2 stopped in her tracks. Eyes widening in alarm as her hand flew to where her sword should have been. It wasn't.

 _"Nines,"_ 2B breathed.

"Fuck," A2 said.

 

 

9S couldn't understand. _How is she alive?_ He thought. Then, angrier, _why is she alive, when 2B isn't!?_

"A2," he said, a smile tugging at his lips as he took a step towards her, his eyes weren't smiling. "Haven't we done this before?"

"Fuck," A2 said, reaching back to grab a sword that wasn't there.

She was unarmed, too far away to jump him before he hacked into her. 9S wasn't sure he could kill her, but he could fuck her up, fuck her up so bad. Fuck her up forever. Do things to her mind they'd _never_ be able to fix.

She knew it, too. She'd resisted his hacking attempts before, but he was rested now. He was in top condition, a new model, and she was _so_ out of date.

"So then," he said, smiling as darkness twisted in his guts. "I think I'm going to break you now."

"Stop," A2 said. "Stop right the fuck now kid. Neither of us want--"

"Fuck off," 9S said, smile dropping. He spat into the grass at his feet, and locked eyes with A2, saw her flinch for just a moment. It surprised him a little. Had she gotten softer since the last time? "I think you're really underestimating just how much I want to fucking kill you."

"Nines--"

9S's eyes flashed.

Outside, it took less than a second. Inside, cataclysmic explosions rang out as 9S hit A2's outer defenses. She was ready for him, he couldn't get in deep, but he hit her all the same, just to cause her pain. He felt her reel back from his assault, felt her start to stagger in the real world. In the next moment, he let his attack cease, and darted across the square. He hit her again, stunning her another moment, and snatched a sword from the blacksmith's table.

Somehow she managed to evade him, ducking to the side. She lunged at him, trying to get in close, too close for him to use his weapon.

He locked eyes with her, and hacked her again. More explosions, more pain, too fast.

In the real world, he was on her again. A2 was fast, the better fighter by far, but she was disoriented, only barely able to keep up with the uncontrolled and unrelenting assault. It was coming too fast, too hard. 9S hacked past layer after layer of security. She was tough, even on the inside.

Tougher than she'd been before. The thought stalled him, distracted him enough to break his assault. Their battle slipped into the real world, and suddenly the sword was out of his hands, clattering to the ground twenty feet away. 9S didn't even see how she did it.

But it didn't matter. A2 was stronger, but she even without the hacking she was _off_. Shaky in a way she'd never been before. 

9S used it. Crashing into her, forcing her down. She stumbled, and he was on top of her, hands on her neck as she struggled, raining useless blows on his arms and head. It was pathetic. This woman was the one who'd killed 2B? An android as weak as this had taken everything he'd cared for?

"Come on!" 9S screamed in her face. "Don't hold back! Show me the you I saw before, the you that tried to kill me! The you that killed _her!_ SHOW ME!"

Then he saw something, something he didn't expect. A2's face in a configuration he wasn't used to.

It was a quiet sorrow, a kind of soft, regretful melancholy that stilled the air between them for a moment. It looked... familiar.

It was only then that he realized it.

"...Wait. What did you just call me?"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Whoops I forgot that neither of them had swords haha. I may or may not edit this to fix that.


End file.
